<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>Imagine Self</title>
	<atom:link href="http://imagineself.com/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://imagineself.com</link>
	<description>find yourself, know yourself, become yourself</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:27:26 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
			<item>
		<title>Contemplating Paternity on Father&#8217;s Day</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/06/contemplating-paternity-on-fathers-day/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/06/contemplating-paternity-on-fathers-day/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:20:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sense of Self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Understanding Your Soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthroposophy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Father]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Father's Day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynn Jericho]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paternal blessings]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paternal connection]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paternal inheritance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paternal problems]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paternal roots]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=3028</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#160; I am using paternity instead of fatherhood because, for me, paternity has a distance living in it.  It’s not a cuddly word smelling of aftershave. It doesn’t make me think of being tucked into bed or watching the Thanksgiving turkey being carved. I don’t get sentimental over paternity. I get sober and mature and [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>I am using<em> paternity</em> instead of <em>fatherhood</em> because, for me, paternity has a distance living in it.  It’s not a cuddly word smelling of aftershave. It doesn’t make me think of being tucked into bed or watching the Thanksgiving turkey being carved. I don’t get sentimental over paternity. I get sober and mature and inquiring.</p>
<p>This is not a sentimental Father’s Day post about Daddy, it is a post to inspire you to look into yourself and find the parts of you that have paternal roots. I suggest four areas to contemplate:<em> inheritance, connection, blessings and problems.</em></p>
<p>Notice that you are thinking of yourself in your formative years &#8211; the first 21 years. As an adult we only need inner fathering.</p>
<p>I share some of my own paternal roots in part to inspire and to model, but also to be transparent and real.</p>
<p><strong>Paternal Inheritance:</strong>  Biologically, how are you your father’s child? Do you look like your father? Or your father’s father? Did you inherit his digestive system, his ears, his musical ability?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I looked like my father. I sang like my father (danced like my mother). Ate like my father.  I suspect my cerebral cortex is like my father’s because my capacity for thinking and questioning, looking at things from unusual perspectives is like his.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I am using the past tense because I have become more myself and less his child even in my biology. The form and functions of my body parts are surprisingly shaped at my current age more by me and less by my genetic roots.</em></p>
<p><strong>Paternal Connection</strong>: How connected were you to your father? Did you have a special affinity with him? How did it shape your sense of relationship to men? Did you trust him? Could you confide in him? Did he respect you?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I was deeply connected to my father. I felt I belonged to him and with him. He understood me because I was like him. (I felt little connection to my mother.)</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Yes, I look for my father’s gifts in men. I have found them, but I have also found his difficulties and problems.</em></p>
<p><strong>Paternal Blessings</strong>: What parts of you did your father see, cultivate, appreciate, honor? Did his life choices provide a model for your personal choices? Did he protect you?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>My father didn’t actively see me or cultivate, appreciate or honor my talents. He adored me, but I never asked him why or what? He wasn’t around from age 10-17 to bless me because my parents divorced and he lived 1300 miles away from me, rarely wrote or called. He neglected me and our relationship…there is still a hole in my psyche.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>I found my father magical in his sense of language, his desire to imagine a better world, and his ability to not let his demons defeat him. His courage helped me find mine.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>The dream of him and the connection I felt to him protected me from my very unhappy reality.  I was a lost princess holding on to the protective memories of my father’s kingdom.</em></p>
<p><strong>Paternal Problems: </strong>Too much or not enough paternal presence? Too rigid or too indulging? Did his personal challenges and sufferings undermine his paternal responsibilities?</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>My father wasn’t around to father me when I started to step into the world as an adolescent. He wasn’t present to help me shape my thinking, express and regulate my feelings, or engage my will with focus and success.  I couldn’t rebel from any paternal constraints. I couldn’t seek paternal guidance, direction, and discipline.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>My father was marginalized and marginalizing and could not find community or social connection. He spoke and wrote articulating his dream of a better world, but never fo</em>und others to help manifest his vision in any practical way.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px; text-align: center;">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">I encourage you to imagine your relationship to your father, describe your paternal roots, even briefly, you will find much self-awareness in the effort.  Don’t be afraid to let go of sentimentality (or rage) and name the blessings and the problems. Do this with compassion for your father and compassion for yourself.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><em>Dear Reader, When you read my posts you are meeting my father in small ways: my language, my imagination all sparkle with his blessing.  I also suspect that my focus on leading others to a vital and mature imagination of self, confident that a new self, self-imagined, will then imagine and manifest the better world and future, stems from seeing his failure to imagine himself in freedom (he could only defend himself and cling to grandiose identities.)</em></p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F06%2Fcontemplating-paternity-on-fathers-day%2F&amp;title=Contemplating%20Paternity%20on%20Father%E2%80%99s%20Day" id="wpa2a_2"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/06/contemplating-paternity-on-fathers-day/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Earth Parenting &#8211; It&#8217;s Only Natural</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/06/earth-parenting/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/06/earth-parenting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:06:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[New Spiritual Practices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earth child]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earth parenting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Father's Day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Forest Unseen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mother Earth]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mother Nature]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mother's Day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nature practices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sacred days]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sacred seasons]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=3008</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[THE SEASON OF PARENTAL MYSTERIES In my studies and research of the cycle of the inner year I have recognized the role of Sacred Days, Feasts or Festivals &#8211; a single day when we celebrate an event every year. and Sacred Seasons &#8211; a period of many days, even weeks, when we devote attention, deepen [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h3>THE SEASON OF PARENTAL MYSTERIES</h3>
<p>In my studies and research of the cycle of the inner year I have recognized the role of</p>
<p><em>Sacred Days, Feasts or Festivals</em> &#8211; a single day when we celebrate an event every year.</p>
<p>and</p>
<p><em>Sacred Seasons</em> &#8211; a period of many days, even weeks, when we devote attention, deepen knowledge, and have an extended time to encounter certain inner mysteries.</p>
<p>In the past Sacred Days and Sacred Seasons were determined by nature, by religious authority, by governments, and by commercial interests. Days and Seasons gave us a collective attention to specified aspects of our tribal lives often celebrated with elaborate social and sensuous rituals.</p>
<p>But as consciousness evolves and we find our inner life and sense of self becoming richer, many of us long for personal days and seasons for our own specified attentions, meanings, reflections and imaginations. We are at the stage of selfhood when the introspective and individual experience offers as much or more meaning than the collective celebration.</p>
<p>I want to shape my sacred days and seasons and discover new ways of relating to the spiritual, the historical, the personal, and the natural events and elements of existence.</p>
<p>From the second Sunday of May, Mother’s Day, to the third Sunday of June, Father’s Day we have five weeks. Do these days frame a season for contemplating and honoring the deed of parenting? One year you might focus on the parenting you got and the parenting you wish you had gotten, and the following year look at how you might parent yourself (time to do Inner Mother Inner Father). Other topics might be parenting space and time &#8211; that’s a change of perspective. Or parenting money!</p>
<p>Unlike animals, good human parenting is not instinctual. It is conscious, creative, and specific to the child (whatever the child is).</p>
<p>In the Parenting Season, we seek to engage parental wisdom, parental compassion, parental expression in relationship to ourselves, to others young and old, to core elements of daily living, to the birthing of the future, and to Nature. Often our mature devotion leads us to face the shadows of parenting, neglect, abandonment, abuse, and idolization. (I share insights about these and other shadows in the 6th session of Inner Mother Inner Father)</p>
<p>It was this time last year that I was developing the content of <a title="PARENT YOURSELF!" href="http://imagineself.com/imif-2/">Inner Mother Inner Father.</a> This year my attention to parenting surprised me with a sudden change in perspective on the ancient feeling toward the earth.</p>
<h3>WHO IS THE PARENT? WHO IS THE CHILD?</h3>
<p>Mother Earth! Mother Nature! Child Earth! Child Nature!</p>
<p>Last week I heard some wise environmentalist, or maybe it was a spiritual teacher admonishing all listeners to care for our Great Mother, the Earth and all Nature. Love the mother of us all. Yes, of course.</p>
<p>But then a big rolling cry swelled in my soul. No, Earth is not our mother, she is our child! With the evolution of consciousness, the relationship has reversed. Once long ago, before the human intellect developed, we were the children of Nature. But no longer.</p>
<p>Let me ask you, as an adult do you take care of your mother? Do you still see her as a resource for your needs? Are you still her child? Do you take her for granted? Do you resent her minor and gross failures and inadequacies? For many it is hard to imagine our mother as needing anything from us until she is dying a death we cannot keep from happening.</p>
<p>Do you project those feelings on to &#8220;Mother&#8221; Earth?</p>
<p>What happens if we see the truth, that we are the neglecting, abandoning, abusing, idolizing parent of the Earth. She is the child, powerless, wounded, starving, lost, but still living. It is time for each of us to learn/imagine how to mother Nature. To do that we must drop the “we responsibility.&#8221; We cannot wait for the collective will to take responsibility. We must each say I &#8212; I can mother Earth.</p>
<p>How do I restore her innocence, and take her into my heart and love her as a most precious child who is so much an orphan these days?</p>
<p>Here are my thoughtful imaginations on what I can do in this parenting season on earth as an orphan:</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">1. I will find a small part of her that I can hold. This might be an area as small as my hand, but I think the best measure is the breadth of my embrace, from hand to hand with my heart in the middle. I can then divide it into hand widths that I can touch.<br />
2. Locate this area. My back yard? An area in a nearby forest or a local park? It needs to be a place that I can visit with some kind of rhythm throughout the year: daily, weekly, monthly.<br />
3. I want to take photos and a video each time so I can keep a picture of her on my desk or by my bed &#8211; just like I keep pictures of my children and grandchildren near me.<br />
4. But I also must use my memory to recall this earth child in my soul before I go to sleep, or while I have my morning tea.<br />
5. On my visits and my recollections I will speak to the nature spirits that dwell within this earth child. I will ask questions and listen. Do they laugh? Do they cry? What do they want me to see or touch?<br />
6. And I will share my experience with others and encourage them to parent their earth child.</p>
<p>This small effort can engage my will, where the entire planet would take hold only in my thoughts and be impossible to actually create and establish an active intimate, real, responsible, and living relationship. I can do this sweet little bit confident it will make a difference to the whole interwoven planet. (Maybe I will watch Avatar, again.) Imagine when I lovingly rest my hand on my earth child here in North Carolina, the love will be felt within an ice flow in Antartica, the sands of the Sahara, a palm tree on Biscayne Blvd in Miami &#8211; you get the picture.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;">Feel a rock,<br />
sing to a bird,<br />
kiss the air,<br />
dance with a stream,<br />
and<br />
care,<br />
care,<br />
care.</p>
<p>Like any child, your earth child needs you to &#8230;Connect. Attune. Revere.</p>
<p>Your parental attention will nurture all of Nature.</p>
<p>Parenting the natural world is so much more than recycling.</p>
<p>I just had another inspiration. Your earth child, like other children, will grow and develop and at some point no longer need your active parenting. Then you will be able to find another part of the earth to parent.</p>
<h3>A RICH EXAMPLE OF EARTH PARENTING</h3>
<p>Here is a book to inspire you written by a man who studied one square meter of the planet everyday for a year, Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature by David George Haskell.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143122940/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143122940&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=imagself-20">The Forest Unseen: A Year&#8217;s Watch in Nature</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" alt="" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=imagself-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=0143122940" width="1" height="1" border="0" /></p>
<h3>DO YOUR OWN IMAGINING</h3>
<p>Building this picture of earth parenting took me a week of questioning and imagining. Please spend some soul time with this imagination and share your inspirations on the blog page. I’d love it if someone wanted to create a Facebook page for Earth Parenting so we can share our experiences with our earth children. <a title="Contact" href="http://imagineself.com/contact/">Contact me</a> if you would like to do this social gesture on earth parenting.</p>
<h3>INNER MOTHER INNER FATHER</h3>
<p>I’d also love for all of you to learn the mysteries of self-parenting that I provide in the Inner Mother Inner Father course. The $100 discount is good through Father’s Day, June 16. <a title="PARENT YOURSELF!" href="http://imagineself.com/imif-2/">Learn more here.</a></p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F06%2Fearth-parenting%2F&amp;title=Earth%20Parenting%20%E2%80%93%20It%E2%80%99s%20Only%20Natural" id="wpa2a_4"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/06/earth-parenting/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Thoughts on Self-Comforting</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/thoughts-on-self-comforting/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/thoughts-on-self-comforting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 26 May 2013 19:52:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Sense of Self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Understanding Your Soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[awake in the middle of the night]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[feel like you matter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-comforting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[strenthen sense of self]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2995</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Comforting, it’s different from a break, a vacation, or a reward. It not about chocolate, massage, or a trashy novel. Let’s begin with exploring discomfort.. What experiences make me uncomfortable? Certain thoughts, certain emotions, certain activities. There is visceral discomfort &#8211; neurochemical variations, aches and pains, hunger, itchiness, temperature, Then there are mood discomforts, degrees [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Comforting, it’s different from a break, a vacation, or a reward. It not about chocolate, massage, or a trashy novel.</p>
<p>Let’s begin with exploring discomfort..</p>
<p>What experiences make me uncomfortable? Certain thoughts, certain emotions, certain activities. There is visceral discomfort &#8211; neurochemical variations, aches and pains, hunger, itchiness,  temperature, Then there are mood discomforts, degrees of  fear, sadness, or anger. Moral discomforts appearing in response to my own ambivalence, oppositional feelings, uncertain righteousness. And the spiritual discomforts when faith flies out from my soul and fades in the distance, the creeping, sinking agony of meaninglessness. Then there is the discomforts of too much to do, not enough to do, and wondering what to do, or how to do, or when to do.  </p>
<p>What is self-comforting, self-easing, self-soothing? It’s an activity that seeks to restore equanimity at best. For most of my life self-comforting has been about self-avoiding and self-distracting — the immature forms of self-comforting and the ones that become bad habits and wicked addictions. Mindless.</p>
<p>Mature self-comforts are mindful and self-ful. Mindful with attention and awareness in the moment. Self-ful with things that only I can do because of who I am. </p>
<p>Mature self-comforts are not distractions. You recognize your discomfort and give yourself unconditional permission to attend fully to the restoration of creative comfort, right comfort.</p>
<p>Writing this post is self-comforting. It’s 4AM in the morning. I woke up about an hour ago and spent some time moving between creative thinking, idle thinking, and I’ve-got-to-get-back-to-sleep anxiousness. I was in need of comfort and soothing. Then I got up went to the bathroom and got my laptop.  Working soothes me.  Being productive stabilizes me, even in the middle of the night. When I work I am very mindful and very full of my best self. </p>
<p>I consider productivity the best and most mature of my self-comforting activities. It may be the only real and truly comforting for my soul. My work matters to and serves others. My self-comforting activity, serves me and serves others, even the future. I find and offer meaning, and the gateway to the making of my meaning, the invitation, the wake-up alarm, has been my discomfort with myself, my dis-ease at being me. I find I need to counter that feeling with doing good.</p>
<p>No matter what is going on, no matter what time day or night, I self-comfort by doing good and being productive.</p>
<p>Oh, I will still distract…surf the web, daydream, eat or drink the not-so-healthy, think critically of certain others, take a long soak in a hot bath, go shopping, even reading Rudolf Steiner who I consider my greatest teacher can be an idealized distraction, and so on.  But…thanks to a maturing of my soul, I’ve learned the difference between self-distraction which can weaken my will, and the true self-comforting which strengthens my will and further develops  the meaning of my existence.</p>
<p>This understanding of self-comforting crystallizes my Inner Mother Inner Father self-parenting wisdom.  In developing the course, asking and feeling all the questions that evolved into the wise compassion provided in the course, I delved into the inner strength nurtured by the maternal archetypes and the outer manifestation encouraged by the paternal archetypes and found the way to a full, integrated adult self.  </p>
<p>Do take advantage of the Mother’s Day Father’s Day $100 discount I am offering, purchase the Inner Mother Inner Father course <a href="http://imagineself.com/imif-2/" title="Inner Mother Inner Father Landing Page">here. http://imagineself.com/imif-2/</a></p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F05%2Fthoughts-on-self-comforting%2F&amp;title=Thoughts%20on%20Self-Comforting" id="wpa2a_6"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/thoughts-on-self-comforting/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Inner Pentecost &amp; The Four Sublime States</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/inner-pentecost-the-four-sublime-states/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/inner-pentecost-the-four-sublime-states/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 17 May 2013 20:19:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Inner Festivals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inner Pentecost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compassion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[equanimity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Frank Chester]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[loving kindness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynn Jericho's Inner Festivals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pentecost]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sympathetic joy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the fifth chamber of the heart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Four Sublime States]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Upper Room]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Whitsun]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2984</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Pentecost, the most social of the Inner Festivals, is a great gathering in an upper room. I wonder at this image of the upper room. What is it? Where is it? How do we prepare to enter it? Here are my thoughts. Let them inspire your own imaginations. Take a moment of timeless time and [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Pentecost, the most social of the Inner Festivals, is a  great gathering in an upper room. I wonder at this image of the upper room. What is it? Where is it? How do we prepare to enter it?  Here are my thoughts. Let them inspire your own imaginations.</p>
<p>Take a moment of timeless time and imagine an upper room of boundless space &#8211; space that allows for the presence of all others. You cannot enter this space if you haven’t imagined it, prepared it in your heart with your heart. </p>
<p>Become the designer of your inmost interior of I for that is the forecourt of the Upper Room. And like your heart. the forecourt has four chambers: loving kindness, compassion, equanimity, and sympathetic joy. Buddha spoke of these four chambers as sublime states. </p>
<p>Sometime in the future you will be entering into the upper room with all other human souls, in the presence of the great archangels, the Virgin Sophia, and the Holy Spirit. </p>
<p>As you reflect on the upper room, breathe deeply. Do you experience a feeling of growing sacred awe? Sacred awe or whatever name you give this feeling, is humbling. I find it keeps enlarging my inmost interior, that I become less ordinary, limited me and evolve into more limitless I-consciousness. All this I-space feels strange. It’s vastness seems filled with holy threat, but when I still my soul, the holy threat is revealed as its opposite. I feel holy comfort providing holy sweetness and holy certainty and the I-space that can embrace all others becomes boundless.</p>
<p>Perhaps, preparing for entering the upper room for the great gathering is the metamorphosing of holy threat into holy comfort through the practice of contemplation, meditation and inner dwelling in the four chambers and filling with the sublime states.</p>
<p>I feel more and more that the celebration of the festival of Pentecost is less a festival of remembrance and much more an imagination of a future. At some time in the future of human consciousness, we actually enter the upper room prepared to know all others with unfathomable knowing. It will only happen because we have dwelled in the four chambers of the forecourt patiently and with perseverance, until our loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and sympathetic joy know no bounds.</p>
<p>Imagine that this Sunday when Pentecost is celebrated.</p>
<p>I found this warm and profound essay on the Four Sublime States and feel it is a true guide for those of us willing to imagine Pentecost and prepare. <a href="http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel006.html" title="The Four Sublime States of Buddha" target="_blank">http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel006.html</a></p>
<p>And you may want to look at the work of Frank Chester and his spiritual research on the fifth chamber of the human heart.  I believe this fifth chamber is the upper room. <a href="http://www.frankchester.com/2010/the-heart/" title="Frank Chester" target="_blank">http://www.frankchester.com/2010/the-heart/</a></p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F05%2Finner-pentecost-the-four-sublime-states%2F&amp;title=Inner%20Pentecost%20%26%20The%20Four%20Sublime%20States" id="wpa2a_8"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/inner-pentecost-the-four-sublime-states/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Mother&#8217;s Day &#8211; A Preparation</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/mothers-day-a-preparation/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/mothers-day-a-preparation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 07 May 2013 14:37:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Relationships]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynn Jericho]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mother]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mother's Day]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mother's milk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mothering]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thinking about mother and mothering]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2922</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a few days, we celebrate Mother’s Day and for most of us it is a very complex celebration. Is it a day for mothers regardless of their strength in mothering? Is it a day when every year, year after year, we acknowledge the woman who gave birth to us, including the nine months her [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In a few days, we celebrate Mother’s Day and for most of us it is a very complex celebration.<br />
Is it a day for mothers regardless of their strength in mothering?<br />
Is it a day when every year, year after year, we acknowledge the woman who gave birth to us, including the nine months her body was our home?<br />
Is it a day of painful pretending or cold, justified avoidance?</p>
<p>Do we celebrate the mother or the mothering? The noun or the verb?</p>
<p>So for the next few days before Mother’s Day think about mother and mothering. Not easy thinking, awakening thinking. Work at it. Write thoughts down and strip away your sentimentality, your grief, your psychology.  It is good work, healing (in the sense of becoming whole), liberating and empowering work &#8211; I-awakening thought. Write. Draw. List. Doodle. Collage. Imagine mother. Imagine mothering. Penetrate the mother archetypes. </p>
<p>I was inspired to write these questions and suggestions by these two paragraphs from an article on analogy.</p>
<blockquote><p>Analogy is the motor driving the build-up of concepts throughout our lives. Concepts, rather than being neat boxes into which all entities can be precisely, objectively and mechanically sorted, are fluid mental structures that, through many successive analogies, evolve continually. For example, 1-year-old Timmy&#8217;s first word is &#8220;mommy&#8221;, and he uses it to designate his own mother. However, his mother is not a static thing, but a constantly varying pattern of things, at whose core Timmy has identified something stable and invariant. Already we are dealing with abstraction and analogy-making, but Timmy&#8217;s initial concept &#8220;mommy&#8221; is merely the foundation of a future skyscraper.</p>
<p>Soon he will realise that other children, too, have mommies. Then he will enrich his category &#8220;mommy&#8221; by adding the mothers of cats and monkeys. However, he has not yet realised that his own parents also have mommies. A year later, he will laugh when told he once resisted this idea. At this point, &#8220;mommy&#8221; has given birth to the more abstract category &#8220;mother&#8221;, which is reaching out tentacles of abstraction to embrace mythological mothers, motherlands, motherboards and even the maternity celebrated in &#8220;Idleness is the mother of philosophy&#8221;.</p>
<p>from “Analogy: the Vital Talent that Fuels Our Mind”<br />
By Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander, New Scientist Magazine issue 2915 of 8 May 2013, p. 30-3</p></blockquote>
<p>Mother as concept becomes more fluid and maternal every time I think about mother/Mother. Oh, how I love fluid concepts.  It is in the fluidity that I find glimmers of truth nourishing me like mother’s milk.</p>
<p>Mother’s milk… if you are fluid what do you think?</p>
<p>Yes, here’s a Mother’s Day contemplation: What provides your soul with mother’s milk? What are the breasts that always flow with warm sweet nourishment for your inner life: your thoughts, your feelings, your goals? What gives you warm sweet comfort for your anxieties, your doubts, your anger?</p>
<p>Do think about all the evolving analogies rising out of mother and mothering. You will be mothering your soul with these thoughts.</p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F05%2Fmothers-day-a-preparation%2F&amp;title=Mother%E2%80%99s%20Day%20%E2%80%93%20A%20Preparation" id="wpa2a_10"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/05/mothers-day-a-preparation/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Missing Manual for Being Human</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/the-missing-manual-for-being-human/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/the-missing-manual-for-being-human/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:58:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[New Spiritual Practices]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sense of Self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Understanding Your Soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthroposphy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[archetypes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Basics of I]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[contemplative practice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[inner development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynn Jericho]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2900</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Basics of I course began last week, but you can listen to the first session and still register for the entire course. It truly is the missing manual on being human. See the examples I give below. There is a series of books written about the computing hardware and software products called the Missing [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The <strong>Basics of I</strong> course began last week, but you can listen to <a href="http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=40541916" title="The Complexity of Self" target="_blank">the first session </a> and still register for the entire course. It truly is the missing manual on being human. See the examples I give below.</p>
<p>There is a series of books written about the computing hardware and software products called the Missing Manual  &#8211; the book that should have been in the box.  They are user-friendly, clear, conversational and make it possible to get the most out of the product.</p>
<p>The <strong>Basics of I </strong>course is the missing manual to being human and in a warm, clear way provides the distinctions to get the most out of your life, your relationships, your work, and your spiritual and moral development.</p>
<p>The <strong>Basics of I </strong>offers fourfold, threefold and twofold distinctions for being human and becoming I.  You will find a deeply meaningful and profoundly useful understanding of your humanity and your individuality.</p>
<p>Let me give you a couple of examples of just how useful these distinctions can be.</p>
<p>This past weekend I was at a wonderful conference, <strong>“Contemplative Practices in a Technological World.” </strong>We were given powerful examples of the value of contemplative practices in education, healthcare, the arts, the workplace and many other settings. But no one was looking at why or how it works.</p>
<p>I was frustrated.  No one offered a picture of the human being and how that picture could enhance the contemplative experience. There was much discussion on how these practices create a more compassionate world, better learning, a more productive and profitable workplace, and personal happiness. The details were vague and the results generalized. There was much to wish for and little to identify with. And the focus of moving forward was on changing the world by creating more support for contemplative practices and not changing ourselves.</p>
<p><strong>The Wisdom of Twofold and Threefold Awareness</strong></p>
<p>Contemplative practices calm, center, and open the human soul. If we look at this activity through the lens of the threefold soul functions of thinking, feeling, and willing we can get a rich sense of why contemplative practices are so important, even nescessary, for personal and collective existence. To do this we will need to look also at the twofold distinction.</p>
<p>Most of us experience times when we are hyper (too much) or hypo (too little) stimulated (a twofold distinction) in our thinking, our feeling, or our willing (a threefold distinction).</p>
<p><strong>high agitation</strong> &#8211; excessive will that leads to burnout.<br />
<strong>low agitation</strong> &#8211; insufficient will that fails to drive desired and beneficial action.</p>
<p><strong>high arousal</strong> &#8211; excessive feeling that leads to emotional drama.<br />
<strong>low arousal</strong> &#8211; insufficient feeling that leads to emotional disengagement.</p>
<p><strong>high alert</strong> &#8211; excessive thinking that leads to distraction, disorganization, disorientation.<br />
<strong>low alert </strong>- insufficient thinking that leads to dullness and inability to learn new things.</p>
<p>Between the low and the high, the hyper and the hypo, is a center that provides balanced vitality in your thinking, feeling and willing.</p>
<p>Contemplative practices will modulate agitation, arousal, and alertness:</p>
<p>   <em> quiet stillness or slow movement modulates agitation,<br />
    focused attention modulates alertness,<br />
    conscious breathing modulates arousal </em></p>
<p>Examine your soul life.  What is the state of your will life? Your feeling life? Your thought life? What needs self-compassionate modulation supported by a regular contemplative practice?</p>
<p>If you generalize your soul life without the threefold distinctions you might not realize the source of your stress. The threefold awareness gives you a more mature, conscious perspective on your needs.</p>
<p>I can say from personal experience with all three soul challenges, the distinctions truly give me a more powerful and productive sense of self-modulation, sensitivity, and management.</p>
<p><strong>Another Example</strong></p>
<p>And another brief example on how a twofold awareness can help.  I was talking with a very creative and intelligent young man.  He told me he felt stuck in his life.  I know his biography and he lost his father before the age of one.  Movement lives in the relationship of polarities: two key polarities are mother and father, feminine and masculine.</p>
<p>This young man knows next to nothing about his father and has had no other close male role models.  Finding the vital active center requires that both poles be relatively balanced for both attraction and repulsion &#8211; moving toward and pushing away.  I told him to go home and ask his mother to tell him everything, good and bad, about his father certain that with the father/masculine presence even as story he will live more dynamically and move beyond his stuckness.</p>
<p>In the Basics of I course, we will find our way to a mature and very creative understanding of the fourfold, threefold and twofold archetypes of being human. Once you know the languages of the archetypes life gets better, more meaningful and a lot more interesting.</p>
<p>If you are a healer, a teacher, a parent, your “work” will become richer, more creative, and far more successful.</p>
<p><strong>Consider the Complexity of I</strong></p>
<p>You can experience the first session on The Complexity of Self here.<br />
<a href="http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=40541916" title="The Complexity of Self">http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventid=40541916</a><br />
Make sure you click to view the presentation with the audio </p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fthe-missing-manual-for-being-human%2F&amp;title=The%20Missing%20Manual%20for%20Being%20Human" id="wpa2a_12"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/the-missing-manual-for-being-human/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Boston Marathon and the Inner I</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/the-boston-marathon-and-the-inner-i/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/the-boston-marathon-and-the-inner-i/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Apr 2013 16:42:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Sense of Self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Understanding Your Soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[a new future]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthroposophy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Basics of I]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Boston Marathon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ground Zero and the Human Soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynn Jericho]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rich Ferandez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[surfing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2894</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Boston Marathon, bombs exploding, life not making any sense. These are times when It is hard to have any sense of self, of being human, that makes any sense. Yet these moments of horror, confusion, dismay and ungroundedness are exactly the moments when we must have a strong, centered, and calm inner experience of [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>The Boston Marathon, bombs exploding, life not making any sense.  These are times when It is hard to have any sense of self, of being human, that makes any sense.</p>
<p>Yet these moments of horror, confusion, dismay and ungroundedness are exactly the moments when we must have a strong, centered, and calm inner experience of selfhood.  </p>
<p>The year after 9/11, I spent hours and hours in conversation with my friend Bethene LeMahieu, building a picture of the individual that would allow each one of us to contribute to “a new ordinary life.” The six hour audiobook we produced, “GROUND ZERO AND THE HUMAN SOUL” THE SEARCH FOR THE NEW ORDINARY LIFE,” presented imaginations of the fourfold, threefold, and twofold experiences of being human and argued that without this inner sense of self there would never be a 9/12, that we would remain stuck between the naivete of 9/10 and the horror of 9/11.<a href="http://imagineself.com/2011/09/out-of-the-shadow-into-the-light-ten-years-later/" title="Out of the Shadow Into the Light – Ten Years Later" target="_blank"> You can download the audiobook here.</a>  Listen to it. It is both comforting and challenging.</p>
<p><a href="http://imagineself.com/the-basics-of-i/" title="The Basics of I" target="_blank">THE BASICS OF I</a> course begins on Thursday.  The Boston Marathon Madness is a call to all of us to pay attention, to learn the language, to build the imagination of the I that can transform the future.  </p>
<p>Last Friday morning at the conference “Contemplative Practices in a Technological World,” I heard Rich Ferandez, the individual in charge of people development at Google, speak about his experience as a surfer during his undergraduate days at UC San Diego.  There is not a bachelors degree offered that provides the wisdom that his surfing gave him.  He said “You can’t change the wave, but you can change how you surf it.”</p>
<p><a href="http://imagineself.com/the-basics-of-i/" title="The Basics of I" target="_blank">THE BASICS OF I</a> will give you the inner I-skills to surf all waves from the nightmare waves of the Boston Marathon to the gentle waves of falling in love or taking a walk with your grandchild.</p>
<p>Please register now. <a href="http://imagineself.com/the-basics-of-i/" title="The Basics of I" target="_blank">Just click here.</a></p>
<p>So pray from your core, calm, centered I for all those harmed in body, soul, or spirit by the Boston Marathon terror. It is only the I that can truly bring about the slow, steady, restoring gesture of love that is so needed right now and over the coming years.</p>
<p>Today is also the anniversary of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech seven years ago. The conference I attended a few days ago was on the Va Tech campus.  I spoke with many members of the faculty and staff who were there and still struggling with the unresolved feelings of that nightmare.  We need to know ourselves, the Basics of I, so that we can make the inner distinctions that allow us to hold our I-center when the rest of us is falling apart.</p>
<p>PS:  This course is inspired by Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner’s worldview based on the wisdom of human consciousness.  I integrate Steiner’s fundamental insights with the  reality of 21st Century daily living.  I will be sharing some very warm, creative, powerful, juicy and useful perspectives and applications for being human and becoming I.  It is Steiner’s wisdom riding the new waves of our times and our personal lives.</p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fthe-boston-marathon-and-the-inner-i%2F&amp;title=The%20Boston%20Marathon%20and%20the%20Inner%20I" id="wpa2a_14"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/the-boston-marathon-and-the-inner-i/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>I-Opening Curiosity</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/i-opening-curiosity/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/i-opening-curiosity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:05:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Sense of Self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Understanding Your Soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthroposophy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[astral body]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[curiosity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[defining I]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[etheric body]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fourfold human being]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[I AM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[imagining self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[individuality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lynn Jericho]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sense of self]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[threefold soul]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[who am I?]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2882</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today is a fiery New Moon  in Aries.  Venus and Mars are dancing very close to each other in the sky and relationships are very much alive. I’ve been deeply impressed by the mature brilliance of Esther Perel, a couples therapist in NYC. I watched her TedX Valentine’s Day talk, along with over 1.4 million [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Today is a fiery New Moon  in Aries.  Venus and Mars are dancing very close to each other in the sky and relationships are very much alive.</p>
<p>I’ve been deeply impressed by the mature brilliance of Esther Perel, a couples therapist in NYC. I watched her TedX Valentine’s Day talk, along with over 1.4 million others, and loved it.  With compassion, intelligence, and humor, she languages insights into love and desire.  Her insights evoke an “of course!” response as if it was an almost conscious thought just waiting for the language to speak it. I posted the link to her talk below, but first please read on.</p>
<p><span style="color: #b73d3b;"><strong>Love=Curiosity</strong></span><br />
Esther Perel links love and curiosity. I wholeheartedly agree. Years of intimate conversations as a lover, a friend, a counselor have taught me the truth, beauty, and goodness of love=curiosity, but I had never put it in words.</p>
<p>What you love, you are unselfishly curious about.  Who are you curious about? Who is curious about you?</p>
<p>Let me put a twist on this wisdom&#8230;</p>
<p><span style="color: #b73d3b;"><strong>Our Most Important Relationship</strong></span></p>
<p>The most important relationship we engage in is the lifelong relationship with ourselves.</p>
<p>At the pearly gates we will first be asked, not how did you love others, but <em>how did you love yourself</em>?  How curious were you about yourself? Did you discover your truth? Did your truth evolve? Did you fulfill your purpose? Did you grasp your humanity and express your individuality?  There are more questions than we could ever ask about self-love and self-curiosity, but do you feel an “of course!” rising in your soul?</p>
<p><em>You see morally awakened self-love is what allows you to love the other as other in freedom.</em></p>
<p>This sacred love=curiosity is both longing and interest.  Do you long for yourself? Are you interested in yourself?</p>
<p>Not just an idealized version of yourself, but the dynamically real, unvarnished you &#8211; all parts.</p>
<p>How many times a day do you feel the question, “Who Am I?” or “Why am I like this?” or &#8220;Why did this happen?&#8221;<br />
<em><strong>Can you open up to your I?</strong></em><br />
Never before in the evolution of consciousness have human beings been so self-aware, so inwardly curious, so eager to open up to the being that says I. Often, we lack the vocabulary, the language, to make the creative distinctions needed to organize and express our self-awareness. The Basics of I provides the archetypal vocabulary for languaging your I-opening thoughts so you can build the living imagination of self beyond the instincts of &#8220;me.&#8221;<br />
I passionately love and I am passionately curious about how we each answer questions like that. This passion led me to develop and offer all the Imagine Self courses. <strong>Today I am opening up registration for a new and profoundly important course, The Basics of I.</strong></p>
<h3><span style="color: #b73d3b;">An I-Opening Course </span></h3>
<p><strong>The Basics of I</strong> gives you the building blocks of being human so that you can build a rich imagination of your individuality. The course is I-opening.</p>
<p>It is practical, scientific, and spiritual. In all my courses and most of my messages, I often speak or write about the fourfold expression of being human (the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral or soul body, and the spirit or I). I am always making distinctions around the threefold soul functions of thinking, feeling, and willing.  I love to examine the polarities we live between. <strong>The Basics of I</strong> will give you a thoughtful, clear, living imagination of the fourfoldness, threefoldness, twofoldness of your individuality framed by the paradox of our vast complexity and our profound simple singularity.</p>
<p><strong>The Basics of I</strong> will give you a powerful ground on which to stand as you continue to unfold your extraordinary individuality throughout the rest of your life.</p>
<p>Personally, I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I had been taught this course in high school and Sunday school. Or if my parents had had this course instead of reading Dr. Spock. Of if the therapists I worked with over the years had this understanding&#8230;the building blocks of my experience of I.</p>
<p>All the information on <a title="The Basics of I" href="http://imagineself.com/the-basics-of-i/" target="_blank">The Basics of I course can be found here.</a> You will find the usual info on the course material, who should take it, what the bnefits are, etc.</p>
<p>If you already know you want to take the course you can register here. Just click this button.</p>
<form action="https://Simplecheckout.authorize.net/payment/CatalogPayment.aspx" method="post" name="PrePage"><input type="hidden" name="LinkId" value="a92508f0-8f1f-45bc-9a46-ab7f27d86fa0" /> <input type="submit" value="Register Now" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Here is the Esther Perel video<br />
<iframe src="http://embed.ted.com/talks/esther_perel_the_secret_to_desire_in_a_long_term_relationship.html" height="315" width="560" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F04%2Fi-opening-curiosity%2F&amp;title=I-Opening%20Curiosity" id="wpa2a_16"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/04/i-opening-curiosity/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Easter Sunday &#8211; The Inner Challenge</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/03/easter-sunday-the-inner-challenge/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/03/easter-sunday-the-inner-challenge/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 31 Mar 2013 03:25:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Inner Easter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inner Festivals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthroposophy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Easter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Easter Mysteries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Resurrection]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2813</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I wish I could say I have a glimmer of understanding or feeling of resurrection. I have a belief in the Resurrection, but not an experience of it. Perhaps that is why we retell the story of Easter every year. Would we need to tell it, if we had the inner deed alive in our [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I wish I could say I have a glimmer of understanding or feeling of resurrection. I have a belief in the Resurrection, but not an experience of it.  Perhaps that is why we retell the story of Easter every year.  Would we need to tell it, if we had the inner deed alive in our thoughts, feelings and will?</p>
<p>Like Rudolf Steiner, I don’t think the human soul is ready to experience the truth of inner resurrection. According to Dr Steiner with all his wisdom, we have a few more incarnations before we can have a living experience of resurrection. </p>
<p>How can we experience the Resurrection, if we keep the suffering of Gethsemane, the betrayal, all the events of Good Friday and the descent into hell safe in a story, in versions that aren’t our own?</p>
<p>The story of Easter Sunday fills me with awe, hope and joy as the resurgence of Nature fills me with delight every Spring. As a being living between spirit and nature, struggling to know my humanity and my individuality, I do not doubt that my spiritual and moral development is leading me slowly to the capacity for pure love that will cause me to die for everyone and the freedom from the laws of nature allowing me to rise from my own death to love again.</p>
<p>But for now, I hope for little excruciating moments of felt inner death followed by a powerful quickening of new life. Do I trust that I will be awake to these dim reflections of Inner Easter Mysteries? Once in a while. More often I am asleep to them or barely dreaming their reality.</p>
<p>What grows stronger in me with each Easter as I strive to find words for connecting what is so faint within me to what can be found in the Gospels is the certainty that at some time in the future over a span of great time, one by one we will each crystalize these mysteries in our souls and know in every cell, every breath, every waking moment the power of our own resurrection. We will no longer find a sting in death. And the greatest story ever told will no longer need to be spoken because it will live in each of us and we will recognize it in everyone.</p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F03%2Feaster-sunday-the-inner-challenge%2F&amp;title=Easter%20Sunday%20%E2%80%93%20The%20Inner%20Challenge" id="wpa2a_18"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/03/easter-sunday-the-inner-challenge/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>11</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Holy Saturday &#8211; The Inner Challenge</title>
		<link>http://imagineself.com/2013/03/holy-saturday-the-inner-challenge/</link>
		<comments>http://imagineself.com/2013/03/holy-saturday-the-inner-challenge/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 30 Mar 2013 03:35:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lynn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Inner Easter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Inner Festivals]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anthroposophy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[descent into inner hell]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Holy Saturday]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[redemption]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[self-hatred]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the Entombment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://imagineself.com/?p=2793</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Welcome to Hades, to Hell, to the Burning, Isolating Sea of No Redemption. Is this a familiar place for you? It is for me, especially in the middle of a sleepless night. The Entombment How do you inwardly bury yourself or parts of yourself? Just choose one of your entombed parts&#8230;there are probably many. Is [...]]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Welcome to Hades, to Hell, to the Burning, Isolating Sea of No Redemption.<br />
Is this a familiar place for you? It is for me, especially in the middle of a sleepless night.</p>
<p><strong>The Entombment</strong><br />
How do you inwardly bury yourself or parts of yourself?  Just choose one of your entombed parts&#8230;there are probably many. Is it the part that is filled with love to give, talents to express, hungers to nourish, wounds to heal? </p>
<p>The Entombment of the body of Jesus Christ was an elaborate ritual of cleansing, oiling, praying, singing, wrapping the divine body with reverence and placing it in the tomb with the deepest love. </p>
<p>How elaborately to you prepare your parts for burial? If you are like me, it is not just elaborate, the preparation is grandiose in self-cruelty. I soil my inner parts with disregard and shame, I oil my inner parts with self-disgust, I curse and grind my teeth, and finally I rip away any final shreds of self-worth and kick myself into the bottomless pit of self-hatred.</p>
<p>What original sin do I see in those parts of myself? </p>
<p><strong>The Descent into the Realm of the Dead</strong></p>
<p>Can your luminous I consciously descend into the pit of self-hatred bringing self-compassion and self-forgiveness to the suffering parts of your soul? Can this spirit-filled self reach the bottom of the pit and shine warmth and light into all the darkest crevices?</p>
<p>This is not a dramatic deed. It is a tender deed arising from within your Holy of Holies.</p>
<p>All the Hosts of Heaven watch you with awe as you do this.</p>
<p><strong>Bringing the Righteous into Heaven</strong></p>
<p>When you have descended to the bottom and seen these unloved parts of yourself, imagine a harmony permeating these lost parts. The Logos within you opens up and emits a cosmic, yet uniquely personal hum filling all the newly lit spaces of your inner hell with a redemptive sounding. Can you simply turn now and begin the ascent as the reunited wholeness of yourself?</p>
<p><a class="a2a_dd a2a_target addtoany_share_save" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fimagineself.com%2F2013%2F03%2Fholy-saturday-the-inner-challenge%2F&amp;title=Holy%20Saturday%20%E2%80%93%20The%20Inner%20Challenge" id="wpa2a_20"><img src="http://imagineself.com/wp-content/plugins/add-to-any/share_save_171_16.png" width="171" height="16" alt="Share"/></a></p>]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://imagineself.com/2013/03/holy-saturday-the-inner-challenge/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>
